Today would normally be a Friday Dose, but it’s Remembrance Day here in Canada and I always spend that with my parents, who both served in WWII. It was with great pride that I watched my father marching today. I’m sending the blog late intentionally.

Normally I preset a holiday blog for this day, but this year I thought I could attempt a touch of poetry by using the daytime absence of the blog as a reminder of the millions of spaces in the lines of men and women coming home during war. It’s like my own figurative two minute silence.

We often forget to include absence as a state. But by quieting our babbling mind we enter a place where we can surrender everything and yet it’s one of the richest states to live in. Despite this truth, we always think of expanding ourselves through addition, and yet the Remembrance Day services today will help us grow as human beings by using silence to create more space within us.

The services today are intended to slow down our busy world and clear our heads, preparing us for the deepest forms of empathy. And we will grow closer to having the space for empathy as we all join each other in emotionally experiencing a heart-wrenching rendition of Last Post on a solo trumpet. It’s sound will mournfully lead us into a two minute silence. And despite its incredible stillness; it’s apparent non-existent activity, that silence will nevertheless be the most stirring, poignant and powerful portion of the service today.

May your day be peaceful. I hope you all had a wonderful Friday in freedom.

peace. s

Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and non-profit organisations locally and around the world.

Following a serious childhood brain injury Scott McPherson unwittingly spent his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and the self. This made him as strange to others as they were to him. Seeing the self-harm people created with their own overthinking, Scott dedicated part of his life to helping others live with greater awareness. He is currently a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB, where he finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.